Boulder County sheriff’s Deputy John Seifert earned a medal of valor for his actions in a 2008 gun battle that saw dozens of rounds fired, but he struggled for years afterward with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He began drinking heavily and left the department two years later. Last year, at his home outside Nederland, he killed himself with a single shotgun blast to the neck.

Seifert is one of hundreds of officers nationally who have taken their lives in the past six years, many of them suffering from PTSD. It’s a condition long ignored in law enforcement, where emotional turmoil is stigmatized and officers learn to suck it up.

“It is difficult enough to have officers come forward who have this problem. There is an ‘I can handle it’ attitude that cops have,” said Mike Violette, executive director of the Colorado State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police.

Attitudes among officers are starting to change slowly, but some say the brass has been slow to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem in the ranks.

In Colorado’s most recent legislative session, lawmakers considered a bill that would have provided workers’ compensation for law enforcement officers who develop work-related PTSD.

The bill was opposed by municipal and state leaders, as well as the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, and it failed to get out of committee. Legislators created a study group to look at the issue.

Denver Police Chief Robert White did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

Nationally, 140 law enforcement officers committed suicide in 2008, and 143 killed themselves in 2009. In 2012, there were 126 suicides, according to a study by Badge of Life, a group of mostly retired officers working to raise awareness of dangers posed by police stress.

The small number of suicides doesn’t show the depth of the problem among the roughly 875,000 law enforcement officers nationwide, said Badge of Life chairman Ron Clark.

He estimates that one in eight officers has PTSD symptoms.

“This is one of the most dangerous psychological jobs in the world,” he said. “We have a nation of ill-educated chiefs, sheriffs, commissioners who don’t understand PTSD/mental health.”

In the course of a career, a cop — even one never involved in a life-threatening incident — is exposed to horrific situations ranging from fatal car wrecks to homicides and suicides.

“When the incident is over, it’s over,” said Mary Guy, a University of Colorado Denver professor who has written widely about emotional response to crisis among first responders. “These people are left with the images, the smells, the sounds. It just lingers.”

Many cops fear that admitting to PTSD will make them appear weak, but that isn’t the only reason they avoid talking about it.

They also fear getting fired or passed over for promotion, said state Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, a sponsor of the bill that would have made officers with PTSD eligible for workers’ compensation.

And cops are good at hiding the turmoil, Clark said. In 85 percent of officer suicides, “no one saw it coming.”

He thinks every officer should be required to have a mental checkup annually.

“You should talk to somebody who has no axes to grind, not your buddy, not some young chickadee,” Clark said.

Someone who suffers a traumatic physical injury in a less-stressful environment than a cop’s and later develops PTSD can qualify for workers’ comp in Colorado. That is not available to officers or other first responders, who are expected to face trauma as part of their jobs.

“The nature of crises and crises response is always emotionally intense. The people who are affected are right on the razor’s edge,” Guy said.

Among other things, the Colorado Municipal League, which opposed the compensation bill, objected to its cost and said employers would have to prove the disorder wasn’t work-related.

Language in the bill was too vague and would have made it too easy for officers to get compensation without suffering a job-related stress disorder, said Greenwood Village Police Chief John Jackson, legislative chairman of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police.

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said agencies throughout the state are proactive in providing assistance for PTSD.

“We take care of our folks and pay for those treatments and interventions,” he said. “I’m not sure what workers’ compensation would do for most folks.”

“Cops are not just going to walk off the street and say, ‘I want a few weeks off; I got PTSD,’ ” he said.

Seifert, who was 51, plunged into depression after a shootout with a gunman who killed the general manager of the Eldora Mountain Resort. Forty-nine rounds were fired in the battle with gunman Derik Bonestroo.

Seifert was never the same.

“He struggled mightily after that shooting,” Pelle said. “(It) led to all kinds of problems manifesting themselves.”

The sheriff’s department provided treatment, as well as professional and peer support, Pelle said, but “unfortunately, he couldn’t overcome it.”

A general assignment reporter for The Denver Post, Tom McGhee has covered business, police, courts, higher education and breaking news. He came to The Post from Albuquerque, N.M., where he worked for a year and a half covering utilities. He began his journalism career in New York City, worked for a pair of community weeklies that covered the west side of Manhattan from 14th Street to 125th Street.

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